Blog

While out and about at Mall of the Emirates recently, we had the chance to check out the results of Harvey Nichols' recent collaboration with the Sheikha Manal Young Artist Award. If you're unfamiliar, this award is an annual fine arts competition which aims to encourage, recognise and promote emerging artists from the UAE
Harvey Nichols commissioned the winners of the 2013 award - Nada Abu Shakra, Bahar Al Bahar, Tayma Bittard and Sarah Alagroobi - to create a series of spectacular window displays that can be seen in Mall of the Emirates throughout Ramadan.

photo 5

Nada Abu Shakra, Protruding Purity
Nada took inspiration from the element of water for her window display. Her interlocking gold units recall the ripples created by water drops as they fall into a still water pond.

photo 2

Bahar Al Bahar, Perception Series - #4
Taking the month-long period of the celebration of Ramadan as the basis of his window display, Bahar created a visual, three-dimensional representation of what a month could look like if it was an object.

photo 1

Tayma Bittard, Transcendence
For her display, Tayma created a female figure which she deconstructed into segments rotated around a central axis. She sees this figure as a visual representation of two components - time and the destruction of the material body to metaphysical trance.

photo 3

Sarah Alagroobi, Palindrome Typological Installation
Sarah played with Arabic typography to create an undulating, large-scale wall surface inspired by an Arabic palindrome (a word or sentence that it is the same word or sentence when read right-left or left-right).